Storm from the Shadows
Storm from the Shadows is the second book of the Honorverse sub-series Saganami Island, written by David Weber. It was published in late February 2009. Timeframe: 1921 PD Cover Summary :Rear Admiral Michelle Henke was commanding one of the ships in a force led by Honor Harrington in an all-out space battle. The odds were against the Star Kingdom forces, and they had to run. But Michelle’s ship was crippled, and had to be destroyed to prevent superior Manticoran technology from falling into Havenite hands, and she and her surviving crew were taken prisoner. Much to her surprise, she was repatriated to Manticore, carrying a request for a summit conference between the leaders of the two sides which might end the war. :But a condition of her return was that she gave her parole not to fight against the forces of the Republic of Haven until she had been officially exchanged for a Havenite prisoner of war, so she was given a command far away from the war’s battle lines. What she didn’t realize was that she would find herself on a collision course, not with a hostile government, but with the interstellar syndicate of criminals known as Manpower. And Manpower had its own plans for eliminating Manticore as a possible threat to its lucrative slave trade, deadly plans which remain hidden in the shadows. Plot As Honor Harrington's Eighth Fleet continues its devastating deep-strike raids into the territory of the Republic of Haven, Haven's technical wizard Admiral Shannon Foraker develops a defensive weapons system named Moriarty, essentially a deep space station devoted entirely to missile fire control, enabling Havenite planetary defenses to fire previously unmatched masses of missiles at invading forces. This system enables even Eighth Fleet with its exceedingly capable anti-missile defenses to be attacked successfully: in the Battle of Solon, three Havenite forces corner the Manticoran force when it arrives. One of Harrington's superdreadnoughts is destroyed outright, and many more are damaged beyond repair. Admiral Michelle Henke's flagship, ''HMS Ajax'', with her hyperdrive offline and her boat bays damaged beyond repair, has her crew trapped aboard. All appears lost, but the crew manages to repair the ship to the point where shuttles can be used to evacuate it. Simultaneously, plans a counter attack using all the ship's remaining offensive capability are made. Henke's flag captain orders her and her staff off just before the attack begins. As the Havenite fleet approaches an apparently evacuated Ajax, the ship fires all remaining missile pods into them, catching them by surprise. Damage comparable to that suffered by Eighth Fleet is sustained, and the Havenites answer by completely destroying Ajax and all other remains of Henke's force. Henke is presumed dead by the Manticorans, as it is believed she did not make it off Ajax before she was destroyed. In reality, however, she got aboard the last evacuating shuttle with two of her officers, and was heavily injured as her ship exploded around them. They are then picked up by the Havenite fleet and become prisoners of war. Thomas Theisman has mandated that all prisoners of war in the renewed conflict between Manticore and Haven are to be treated as fairly and humanely as possible. Henke recovers in a comfortable military hospital, during which time she is visited in turn by Theisman and President Eloise Pritchart. After she recovers, Henke takes command as the senior Manticoran Prisoner of War on an island on Haven. Henke spends the next six months as CO of the Manticoran PoWs. One day she is summoned once again to the company of Theisman and Pritchart, and is informed that she will be paroled. In return, Pritchart asks Henke, a close relative of Queen Elizabeth III, to petition the Manticoran leadership for a peace summit between the Star Kingdom and the Republic. There is one more stipulation: Henke must give her legally binding oath that she will not command a force against the Havenite military, or otherwise act against the interests of Haven. This she does, and is sent back to Manticoran territory. Henke convinces a reluctant Queen Elizabeth to personally meet with Pritchart in the neutral Kingdom of Torch. In the meantime, Henke and Manticore are put in a dilemma: she cannot go back to war against Haven, or else violate her parole. Yet, she is one of the RMN's finest tacticians, and the Bureau of Personnel recognizes that her talents should not be wasted. Thus, she is assigned to become second in command to Vice Admiral Augustus Khumalo in the distant Talbott Quadrant, which has petitioned via plebiscite to become annexed by the Star Kingdom. Despite the disastrous Battle of Monica that resulted in Monica becoming a vassal of Manticore, and the public embarrassment of all involved in the plot, including Manpower Incorporated and the Solarian League's Office of Frontier Security, Manpower almost immediately launches another plan to force Manticore from the Quadrant, and cause a conflict between the Star Kingdom and the League to serve its own ends. Taking advantage of widespread arrogance in the OFS and the Solarian League Navy towards "lesser" nations like Manticore, Manpower manipulates the only star nation of the Talbott Cluster that declined to participate in the annexation, the New Tuscan Republic, to engineer a false conflict between itself and Manticore. Manpower operative Aldona Anisimovna persuades them to support a new plot that she tricks them into believing will help preserve New Tuscan sovereignty. After a series of deliberately provoked incidents between New Tuscan merchant ships and Manticoran forces charged with inspecting them as they enter Manticoran territory, a fleet of ships under the command of Admiral Josef Byng, a viciously anti-Manticoran and incompetent SLN officer, is dispatched to Talbott. Byng himself is completely oblivious to the plot, and honestly believes that his true purpose for being sent to Talbott is to check Manticoran aggression against New Tuscany. Henke encounters Byng and through a Naval Intelligence dossier on him discovers Byng's nature and arrogant attitude towards all things Manticoran. However, she is powerless to do anything about the Solarian presence in the area. In the wake of this crisis, the overall leader of Manpower Inc. and Mesa, the enigmatic Albrecht Detweiler, discusses his future plans with various persons, including his several "sons", who are actually clones of himself. The Mesan Alignment, the true power behind the seemingly unpolitical Mesans, plans to finally come out of the shadows and launch a direct attack on the Manticore System with a secret weapon: stealth ships that travel without impeller drives and are thus completely undetectable by conventional means. Manpower is actually just a front for the Alignment, which is run by Detweiler and a cadre of other genetically engineered oligarchs set on domination of all life in the galaxy. The Mesan plot comes to a head: New Tuscany scuttles one of their own merchant ships as a Manticoran vessel is approaching for an inspection, in an attempt to frame Manticore for its destruction. Even though it is blatantly obvious that the detonations which destroyed the freighter were caused internally, Admiral Byng wastes no time upon hearing of the incident to protect them against further Manticoran "aggression". Admirals Khumalo and Henke, unaware of Byng's presence in the system, send a small fleet of three destroyers to New Tuscany to officially complain about their actions. As soon as the destroyers arrive, Anisimova, using a remote controlled nuclear device, destroys the largest New Tuscan space station in orbit around the planet, killing tens of thousands of New Tuscans. Admiral Byng automatically assumes that the Manticoran destroyers are responsible, and orders his forces to open fire upon them in retaliation, destroying them all. Manticore is propelled into a state of armed conflict with the Solarian League. For Manticore, the events could not have come at a worse time: Lester Tourville's massive attack on the Manticore System itself takes place, prompting the Battle of Manticore and the near-complete elimination of the offensive capabilities of Manticore and Haven. Recognizing his huge opportunity, Albrecht Detweiler orders the deployment of his secret weapon on Manticore far earlier than he had originally intended. Commanded by one of his son-clones, the new Mesan Alignment Navy embarks on the stealth ships for Manticore. Admiral Henke learns of the massacre at New Tuscany, and immediately assembles all her ships and embarks for the system. Upon her arrival, she orders Byng to stand down, warning him that Manticoran naval capabilities far exceed that of the Solarians on a qualitative basis. Byng, who considers this warning a desperate bluff, refuses. After reiterating her warning several times, and being ignored each time, Henke launches a full salvo of missiles at Byng's flagship from far outside the engagement range of the SLN forces, completely destroying it. Recognizing their complete tactical deficit, Byng's second in command complies with Henke's demands: the Solarian League Navy, the most powerful military force in the known universe, is dealt its first defeat in centuries. On Manticore, Queen Elizabeth III meets with her inner circle to discuss the events that have taken place. During this meeting, Honor Harrington remarks that she believes conflict with the Solarian League had been inevitable, and the only way Manticore is going to survive is going to be to destroy the League as it is and break it up into several successor star nations which Manticore can deal with individually. Elizabeth initially rejects this new approach, believing that Haven, in the wake of that nation's devastating assault on Manticore, must be dealt with to prevent further assaults of that nature. However, Honor through her status as an empath, reveals that she has discovered via an extensive investigation that the renewed conflict between Haven and Manticore was engineered by Mesa to keep the two sides, both enemies to Mesa, distracted. Using the evidence she has uncovered, Harrington convinces Elizabeth to see things her way and attempt to reconcile with Haven. Meanwhile, the OFS administrator responsible for his organization's involvement with the Mesans meets with Fleet Admiral Sandra Crandall, CO of Task Force 496, a powerful fleet of capital ships stationed relatively close to the Cluster. Taking advantage of Crandall's prejudices towards "neo-barbarians" like Manticore, and her rage over the destruction of Byng's flagship, he surreptitiously convinces her to prepare to attack Manticore in the Talbott Cluster. Simultaneously, the Mesan Alignment Navy's stealth ships arrive in the Manticore System, and deploy many missile pods before turning to leave. The commander of this force remarks that in a period of weeks, Manticore will be dealt a devastating blow. Background Unlike most Honorverse novels, Storm from the Shadows ends with a cliffhanger. References Characters Ingeborg Aberu | Malachai Abruzzi | Dominica Adenauer | Joanna Agnelli | Daud ibn Mamoun al-Fanudahi | Filipa Alcoforado | Raoul Alexander-Harrington | Engracia Alonso y Yáñez | Joachim Alquezar | Aldona Anisimovna | Martin Appleton | Roger Archer | Gervais Archer | Victoria Armstrong | Maitland Askew | Marguerite Attunga | Isabel Bardasano | Chris Billingsley | Jessup Blaine | Helga Boltitz | Jerod Bouchard | Hildegard Bourget | Alain Boutin | Adelbert Bouvier | Antonio Braga | Toussaint Brangeard | George Brescatore | Adolf Breshnikov | Clorinda Brinkman | Oliver Bristow | Anne-Louise Brulé | Simon Brunner | Josef Byng | Alesta Cardot | Frederick Carlson | Tanguy Carmouche | Joseph Carus | Sterling Casterlin | Armand Challon | Victor Challon | Ambrose Chandler | Liam Chang | Julie Chase | Ray Chatterjee | Hai-shwun Cheng | Anastasia Chernevsky | Cheryl Clifford | Alan Coker | Theresa Coleman | Jennifer Colenso | Jerome Conner | Lucian Cortez | Wesley Cramer | Sandra Crandall | Paulo d'Arezzo | Jacinta Da Orta e Diadoro | Albert Dallas | Pryce Danville | Lewis Denton | John DesMoines | Albrecht Detweiler | Benjamin Detweiler | Collin Detweiler | Daniel Detweiler | Evelina Detweiler | Everett Detweiler | Franklin Detweiler | Gervais Detweiler | Leonard Detweiler | Wilton Diego | Ellis Drewson | Agafia Duchovny | Damien Dusserre | William Edwards | Jessica Epstein | Kyle Fernandez | Massimo Filareta | Ansten FitzGerald | Sheila Flynn | Vincenzo Fonzarelli | Clement Foreman | Jane Garcia | Rochelle Goulard | Josette Guédon | Mateo Gutierrez | Shona Gyulay | Abednego Haftner | Raymond Halstead | Damien Harahap | Honor Harrington | Dwayne Harrison | Abigail Hearns | Sonja Hemphill | Michelle Henke | Coleman Hennessy | Vivienne Henning | Junyan Hongbo | Alexandra Horn | Frazier Houseman | Honorine Huppé | Stanley Hurskainen | Efron Imbar | Mazal Inbari | Thor Jackson | Aphrodite Jackson | Rachel Jacobi | Sherilyn Jeffers | Vladislava Jenkins | Barnabé Johansen | Albert Kaminski | Naomi Kaneshiro | Naomi Kaplan | Emil Karlberg | Otmar Kenichi | Augustus Khumalo | Winston Kingsford | Joshua Kittow | Innokentiy Kolokoltsov | Peter Kolosov | Felicidad Kolstad | Henri Krietzmann | Prosper L'anglais | Samiha Lababibi | Bridget Landry | András Laszlo | Mariane Laycock | Herschel Le Vern | Cynthia Lecter | Ginger Lewis | Stillwell Lewis | Horace Lynch | Nathan MacArtney | Esmé MacKechie | Eachann MacMinn | Willard MaCuill | Alice MaGuire | Oliver Manfredi | Leontina Markussen | Isaiah Maslov | Eric Masters | Estelle Matsuko | Martin McClelland | Clinton McCormick | Heather McGill | Dabney McIver | Jansen Metcalf | Diego Mikhailov | Edward Miskin | Warden Mizawa | Gladys Molyneux | Rachel Monahan | Atalante Montella | Frank Morgan | Franklin Musgrave | Zhin Myau | Amal Nagchaudhuri | Gordon Nelson | Kwo-Lai Ning | Harbrecht Noorlander | Quentin O'Malley | Wanda O'Reilly | Gregor O'Shaughnessy | Mateuz Ødegaard | Lori Olson | Shulamit Onassis | Lajos Orban | Karol Østby | Valery Ottweiler | Michael Oversteegen | Nicholas Pélisard | John Pershing | Linda Petersen | Henry Pickering | Tom Pope | Omosupe Quartermain | Rajampet Rajani | Oliver Ratté | Lex Razumovsky | Pierre Redmont | Consuela Redondo | Osama Richardson | Hal Roach | Léopold Rochefort | Marcelito Roelas y Valiente | Brangwen Ronayne | Tobias Rützel | Lemuel Sackett | Ruth Sarkozy | Mark Sarnow | Victoria Saunders | Federico Schroeder | Ellen Seacrest | Gabrielle Séguin | Terrence Shaw | Loretta Shoupe | Evelyn Sigbee | Hosea Simpkins | Tamara Sloan | John Stackpole | Roderick Sung | Sybil Moorehead | Mang Sywan | Lindsey Szegdi | Kunimichi Taketomo | Kyrillos Taliadoros | Alvin Tallman | Irene Teague | Rachel Teke | Aivars Terekhov | Sinead Terekhov | Maxwell Tersteeg | Vincenzo Terwilliger | Karl-Heinz Thimár | Karlotte Thimár | Francis Thurgood | William Tigh | Frederick Topolev | Iona Török | Jackson Treacher | Jayne Trudeau | Arlo Turner | Jedidiah Turner | Roberto Tyler | Bernardus Van Dort | Paul Van Scheldt | Bradley Varislav | Lorcan Verrochio | Maxime Vézien | Joshua Walsh | Astrid Wang | Frederick Winton-Travis | Agatá Wodoslawski | Jason Wright | Tobias Wright | Nicasio Xamar | Sharon Yang | Kun Chol Yao | Sylwester Zagorski | Jacob Zavala | Ursula Zeiss | Helen Zilwicki Starships * [[HMS Achilles|HMS Achilles]] * [[HMS Aegis|HMS Aegis]] * [[HMS Ajax|HMS Ajax]] * [[HMS Ambuscade|HMS Ambuscade]] * [[HMS Andromeda|HMS Andromeda]] * [[HMS Aria|HMS Aria]] * [[HMS Artemis|HMS Artemis]] * [[HMS Atum|HMS Atum]] * [[HMS Audacious|HMS Audacious]] * [[HMS Black Rose|HMS Black Rose]] * [[HMS Blackstone|HMS Blackstone]] * [[HMS Bryan Knight|HMS Bryan Knight]] * [[HMS Buckler|HMS Buckler]] * [[HMS Clotho|HMS Clotho]] * [[HMS Daedalus|HMS Daedalus]] * [[HMS Dagger|HMS Dagger]] * [[HMS Devastation|HMS Devastation]] * [[HMS Domino|HMS Domino]] * [[HMS Duke of Cromarty|HMS Duke of Cromarty]] * [[HMS Ericsson|HMS Ericsson]] * [[HMS Fury|HMS Fury]] * [[HMS Galahad|HMS Galahad]] * [[HMS Gallant|HMS Gallant]] * [[HMS Gauntlet|HMS Gauntlet]] * [[HMS Gawain|HMS Gawain]] * [[HMS Hercules|HMS Hercules]] * [[HMS Hexapuma|HMS Hexapuma]] * [[HMS Holocaust|HMS Holocaust]] * [[HMS Horatius|HMS Horatius]] * [[HMS Imperator|HMS Imperator]] * [[HMS Intolerant|HMS Intolerant]] * [[HMS Intrepid|HMS Intrepid]] * [[HMS Invictus|HMS Invictus]] * [[HMS Ironside|HMS Ironside]] * [[HMS Ivanhoe|HMS Ivanhoe]] * [[HMS Jason|HMS Jason]] * [[HMS Javelin|HMS Javelin]] * [[HMS Janissary|HMS Janissary]] * [[HMS Lancelot|HMS Lancelot]] * [[HMS Lodestone|HMS Lodestone]] * [[HMS Necromancer|HMS Necromancer]] * [[HMS Nike|HMS Nike]] * [[HMS Queen Adrienne|HMS Queen Adrienne]] * [[HMS Quentin Saint-James|HMS Quentin Saint-James]] * [[HMS Patrocles|HMS Patrocles]] * [[HMS Penelope|HMS Penelope]] * [[HMS Perseus (battlecruiser)|HMS Perseus]] * [[HMS Petard|HMS Petard]] * [[HMS Priam|HMS Priam]] * [[HMS Raven|HMS Raven]] * [[HMS Reprise|HMS Reprise]] * [[HMS Rifleman|HMS Rifleman]] * [[HMS Roland|HMS Roland]] * [[HMS Romulus (BC)|HMS Romulus]] * [[HMS Rondeau|HMS Rondeau]] * [[HMS Samurai|HMS Samurai]] * [[HMS Star Ranger|HMS Star Ranger]] * [[HMS Stevedore|HMS Stevedore]] * [[HMS Succubus|HMS Succubus]] * [[HMS Theseus |HMS Theseus '']] * [[HMS Tisphone|HMS ''Tisphone]] * [[HMS Tristram|HMS Tristram]] * [[HMS Unicorn|HMS Unicorn]] * [[HMS Victorious|HMS Victorious]] * [[HMS Vigilant|HMS Vigilant]] * [[HMS Volcano|HMS Volcano]] * [[HMS Warlock|HMS Warlock]] * [[HMS White|HMS White]] * [[MANS Chameleon|MANS Chameleon]] * [[MANS Ghost|MANS Ghost]] * [[MANS Mako|MANS Mako]] * [[MANS Shark|MANS Shark]] * MANS'' Wallaby'' * [[MNS Cyclone|MNS Cyclone]] * [[MNS Hurricane|MNS Hurricane]] * [[MNS Typhoon|MNS Typhoon]] * [[NTNS Camille|NTNS Camille]] * [[NTNS Hélène Blondeau|NTNS Hélène Blondeau]] * [[RHNS Comet|RHNS Comet]] * [[RHNS Conquete|RHNS Conquete]] * [[RHNS Sovereign of Space|RHNS Sovereign of Space]] * [[SLNS Jean Bart|SLNS Jean Bart]] * [[SLNS Impudent|SLNS Impudent]] * [[SLNS Resourceful|SLNS Resourceful]] * [[SLNS Restitution|SLNS Restitution]] Stations * Talbott Station Planets * Manticore * Mesa Nations * Mesa * New Tuscany * Republic of Haven * Republic of Monica * Solarian League * Star Empire of Manticore Other Chief of Naval Operations (SLN) | Cloning | Detweiler Consortium | Hermes Buoy | Mesa Terminus | Mesan Alignment | New Tuscany Incident | O'Daley Vineyards | Republic of Haven Navy | Royal Manticoran Navy | Second Battle of New Tuscany External links * ''Storm from the Shadows'' on Wikipedia * Official Release Website Category:Honorverse material